Comment by Okawari
2 hours ago
It's never going to happen, but I felt we solved all of this with forums and IRC back in the day. I wish we gravitated towards that kind of internet again.
Group sizes were smaller and as such easier to moderate. There could be plenty of similar interest forums which meant even if you pissed of some mods, there were always other forums. Invite only groups that recruited from larger forums (or even trusted members only sections on the same forum) were good at filtering out low value posters.
There were bots, but they were not as big of a problem. The message amplification was smaller, and it was probably harder to ban evade.
> I wish we gravitated towards that kind of internet again.
So do it. Forums haven't gone away, you just stopped going to them. Search for your special interest followed by "Powered by phpbb" (or Invision Community, or your preferred software) and you'll find plenty of surprisingly active communities out there.
You're describing Discord today
Bots are a major problem on Discord. I frequently receive messages to buy MMO gold.